In this guide, I am going to sort the laws of Amazing Cultivation Simulator into tiers, show where your sect gets each of them and explain what Law Match really does to a disciple. A law is the cultivation method a disciple picks when you promote them, and they will keep it for good unless you put them through Rebirth.

The quick answer: in my ranking, Law of Nimbus Conquest (DLC) and Primordial Symbols are the strongest laws, Seven-Slaughtering Sword is the best fighter without the DLC and Sunflower Refining is the best starting law. Law Match is a plain multiplier on cultivation speed and Golden Core quality, and a disciple who exactly meets every requirement already sits at 125%.

The numbers in this guide are checked against the game files of the current Steam build (version 1.26, base game). Law of Nimbus Conquest is from the Immortal Tales of WuDang DLC, and its numbers are not part of those files.

Laws tier list

This is my ranking for a normal playthrough, where your sect has to cultivate, fight off attackers and survive its tribulations. Myriad Artifact, Primordial Alchemy, Heaven Stealing and Sixteen Supreme Steps are a different case. You pick them for a job (crafting, pills, a very long life or support), so their tier says little about how useful one such disciple is going to be. Law of Nimbus Conquest is the only DLC law in the list, and its placement leans on player consensus more than on the files, since most recent threads on the subreddit rank it first.

Requirements and elements

An empty cell means the law does not ask for that attribute, and Law Match will ignore it. The last column is the Law Match with all five attributes at the cap of 10, before any element bonus. Nimbus Conquest is missing because its requirements are not in the installed files.

Law Match

Law Match is the percentage you will see next to each law when you promote a disciple. It only does three things:

• It multiplies cultivation speed. At 150% a disciple will cultivate 1.5 times as fast as at 100%, and at 50% only half as fast, if everything else is the same.
• It multiplies the Golden Core score, where it counts exactly like Max Qi.
• It decides whether a disciple can accept a law from the Manifesting Mandate secret, which needs 100% or more.

It does not enter any breakthrough’s success chance directly, it does not speed up manual experience, and it does nothing in combat. It does reach later breakthroughs through the Golden Core grade, though: while the disciple is in the Golden Core realm, a grade 1 to 3 core multiplies the success chance of later breakthroughs that roll for success by 1.5, and a grade 7 to 9 core cuts it to 0.2 to 0.3 times. There is also no bonus or penalty threshold at 100%.

How it is calculated

The game starts at 100% and then looks only at the attributes the law requires:

• -20% for every missing point
• +4% for every point above a requirement
• +25% if no required attribute is short at all

This attribute part can never drop below 50%, but element bonuses and penalties are added after that floor. Attributes cap at 10, and the game reads their current value with every bonus included, so attribute manuals, pills and gear all move your Law Match. Bear in mind that the number will drop again once a temporary pill wears off.

For example, Myriad Artifact needs Perception 8, Intelligence 5 and Luck 3. A disciple with exactly 8, 5 and 3 gets 125%. A disciple with Perception 7, Intelligence 5 and Luck 3 is one point short, so they land at 80%. Give that same disciple Intelligence 8 and Luck 5, and the five surplus points cancel out the missing one, which puts them at 100%.

The better fix is usually the law’s own attribute manuals. They add a percentage of the base attribute, and Law Match reads the boosted number. On Myriad Artifact, Conditioning Chant and its first two upgrades add +15% Perception in the first realm, turning 7 into 8.05 and the 80% disciple into a 125% one. On Heaven Stealing, a 7-Constitution disciple will reach 9.1 with three Defiled manuals once they are in the Golden Core realm (the third one, Defiled Mind, needs that realm, so the core itself forms at 8.4). This is not going to close a 3-point gap, though. A 6-Constitution disciple only reaches 7.8 by then, which is a 76% match with Luck at 3.

Element bonuses

Element bonuses come from three places. Reincarnated sentient spirits can get an Innately friendly or hostile trait for an element, worth +50% or -50%. Alchemy Qi Overflowing weather adds +50% to one element. Yaoguai thought shards give +30% from the Facing shards, or -40% to -50% from the season and Ground shards. Since the floor does not cover any of this, a Fire-law Yaoguai with a Winter thought shard can sit at 10%, and an Innately Fire-hostile spirit can reach 0%. Bonuses add at most +100%, so 325% on True Sun Refining is the hard ceiling.

Golden Core quality

Golden Core quality is a product of Max Qi, Law Match, Luck, mental state and the spot’s Qi density, time of day, weather, season and element. Law Match and Max Qi count exactly the same, so +10% match is worth as much as +10% Max Qi. Max Qi has no cap, which is why it is usually the real limit.

*All other Golden Core factors neutral. Grade 1 is the best core.

Older Steam and Reddit threads still pass around two rules: that anything below 90% is not worth training and that a grade 3 core needs 125%. Neither exists in the code. As the table shows, a 100% disciple will reach grade 3 as well. It simply needs more Max Qi to get there.

Make sure to start the Golden Core breakthrough at full Qi. The grade preview assumes full Max Qi, and the core’s score builds while it drains your current Qi.

On the cultivation panel and the Golden Core breakthrough window, Law Match shows as a row of pluses or minuses, one per 10 points away from 100%, rounded up and capped at five. So 102% already shows one plus.

Recruiting for a law

Since only the required attributes count, decide on the law first and then recruit for its requirements. A recruit who is one point short can often be fixed with the law’s own attribute manuals, but three points short usually cannot be fixed.

Luck deserves a little bit more attention. It multiplies the Golden Core score, and the Luck boosts from manuals, pills and gear are percentages of the disciple’s own Luck, so recruiting for it is the cheapest route. That being said, I would not worry too much about a weak match in your first generation. A 90% disciple still cultivates, just slower.

Best starting law

You will usually start with one of the five Taiyi laws, and the other four become available through the Return to Taiyi secret from day 21.

The game files do not rank the starters on strength, but on the costs in the table Sunflower comes out cleanest, and it is the law I would recommend for most sects.

Sunflower Refining Law

Sunflower will reach the Golden Core with no item, lifespan or injury cost. You will have to face a Thunder Tribulation right after the core forms, so prepare for it before you start. Later, Earthbound Qi adds flat Max Qi in four layers of 15,000, 30,000, 60,000 and 120,000, for 225,000 in total.

For artifacts, Sunflower can go either way, but not both. The Lunarrock line ends in Lunarfrost Speck (+1 artifact, two in total). The Quickdraw line ends in Unus: a huge Artifact Power boost, but only one artifact and no Artifact Qi or recovery bonuses. Earthbound Qi needs Notes on Moral Integrity, which locks out Void Worship and with it Unus. An easy road to the core plus that Max Qi pool puts it in A tier.

True Sun Refining Law

With True Sun, three breakthroughs before the Golden Core can injure your disciple on a fail, and their base odds are fixed instead of rising with an attribute (Luck, mood, pills, weather and season still move them), and after the core you will face a 12-day adventure breakthrough. In return it is a dedicated spellcaster. Mindblaze and Innerfire cut the Qi cost of spells, and its 5 in every attribute gives it the highest Law Match ceiling. The injuries are what keep it in B tier.

Six Paths Reincarnation Law

Six Paths needs the least cultivation to reach the Golden Core, but its breakthroughs cost 40 years of lifespan before the core and another 360 after it. Its own breakthrough rewards give back 420 years more lifespan than other laws get, so over the whole law it comes out about even, but that extra only arrives in the Primordial Spirit realm, and until then it is up to 100 years behind a law with no lifespan cost. Its manuals add some Spell Power, though less than True Sun’s, and its tree holds the Nirvana Pill recipe. Players also find it weak at the start and end of each stage, and the files agree: in every stage but the last, the two breakthroughs after Reborn take back the Max Qi and power that Reborn gave. That is why I put it in C tier.

Sixteen Supreme Steps Law

Sixteen Steps is the only starter that needs an item before the Golden Core. Its Inner Cauldron breakthrough will eat a Ginseng Pill and 10 years of lifespan on every attempt, and you cannot even start it without a Ginseng Pill. After the core, another breakthrough needs Earth Flux. Support miracles like Seal Contract, Ensoulment and Qi Aquasphere are handy, but as a first law it only makes C tier.

Grand Chariot Wisdom Law

Grand Chariot is going to need four stages and 25,200 cultivation to reach the Golden Core, about five times Sunflower’s 5,200, and the game’s own text warns that it will take a long time to cultivate. Its one edge over Seven-Slaughtering Sword is Artifact Mastery: seven manuals raise the Mastery cap by 1 each, from 20 to 27. Otherwise it is clearly behind Seven-Slaughtering Sword as an artifact law, so it ends up in C tier as well.

Advanced laws

Primordial Symbols Law

Primordial Symbols forms five Natal Talismans: the First, Fire and Water Talisman before the Golden Core, the Primordial Talisman in the Golden Core realm and the Divine Talisman in Primordial Spirit. These breakthroughs cannot fail once you submit a drawing, and their strength scales with the drawing mode your current Qi can pay for and with your breakthrough chance at that moment.

You can stack the same talisman in the base game. Trace it once as a real Natal Talisman, then draw it freehand on the Blank option, and if the game recognises the drawing, you will get a fake copy that gives 60% of what a traced one gives at the same drawing accuracy. Five copies is the maximum. Getting every freehand drawing recognised is hard, though, and the law asks for Perception 8, Intelligence 8 and Charisma 4. With no element and no counteractive manuals, it is probably one of the most flexible late-game laws in the base game, hence S tier.

Seven-Slaughtering Sword

Seven-Slaughtering Sword is well ahead of Grand Chariot on artifacts: three artifacts instead of two, a much bigger Artifact Power bonus and far more Artifact Qi and Qi recovery. With both trees maxed, every breakthrough before ascension done and no gear or pills counted, its artifacts hit about 1.9 times as hard as Grand Chariot’s, or about 2.9 times counting the extra artifact.

Its hurdle is the Golden Core breakthrough, which will use up one Blade Pill, and you cannot start it without one. The recipe is in the law’s own pre-Golden Core manual Seven-Slaughtering Form (+20% Constitution, a little Max Qi), and Blade Pills also turn up at auctions. As the best fighter without the DLC, it gets A tier.

Myriad Artifact Law

Myriad Artifact is the crafting law. Most of its tree, from Aura Refinement to Supreme Analysis of Creation, raises the success rate, tier and quality of crafted artifacts, and little of it helps in a fight. That puts it in B tier, but a good crafter is going to arm every fighter in your sect. Its Perception 8 requirement is also easier to meet than it looks, as shown in the Law Match section.

Primordial Alchemy Law

Primordial Alchemy is the alchemy law, with a long list of pill recipes (the Forming Pill among them) and manuals for alchemy success rate, speed and yield. Its exclusive edge is Remold. An ascended Primordial Alchemy cultivator leaves an Immortal’s Mortal Body behind, and Remold on it works once per character for 25 Incense (the game’s own tooltip names outer disciples as the target). It raises the five attributes by a random amount of up to +40% each, and attributes that are already high gain little or nothing. Once you transcribe the law, the Pavilion will also hand its first-level alchemy manuals to disciples of other laws, so you will rarely need many of these cultivators. B tier, for the job.

Emotion Severing Law

Emotion Severing has the biggest percentage Max Qi bonuses of any base-game law’s manuals (Sunflower’s Earthbound Qi is flat instead), and by far the largest cultivation-speed boost too. For spells it offers little. Its only spell manual raises Spell Power and Spell Qi Cost together, so spells will get stronger and dearer at once, and it has no extra-artifact manual either. What it adds is a set of social and conversion miracles such as Celestial Demon Dance and Chant of Resonance, plus the Feather of Agility legacy artifact. The 9 Charisma requirement is the real hurdle for what is otherwise a fairly solid B tier law.

Heaven Stealing Law

Heaven Stealing is not a dedicated tank law. Its passive Qi Shield manual raises barrier strength by about 10% at a high Protect skill (Sunflower’s two by about 12%), its second one is only a short self buff, its Max Qi manuals are mid-pack and it has no Artifact Power or Spell Power manuals at all. Where it really leads is lifespan: +1,170 years flat, Divine Theft (+500% base lifespan) and slower ageing, although its breakthroughs also cost 945 years of lifespan in total. That long life is what puts it in B tier, as a support law for disciples who need time more than strength.

Its four Defiled manuals each give +10% Constitution and take 20% of another attribute (Charisma, Perception, Intelligence or Luck), and only its own Restore manuals at Primordial Spirit give that back. If you need the Constitution for Law Match, keep Luck at 4 or more before Defiled Fortune, which can drop a 3-Luck disciple under the requirement.

Reformed Lifeblood, one of its first manuals, damages the heart. That Smelting wound will never heal on its own or with doctors. A Panacea Pill or Holy Essence is the cure, while the Panacea miracle will not touch it.

Jade Purity Immortal Law

Jade Purity is element-less, and its signature is Tao Refinement: one Tribulation Ashe for a chance to raise an item’s tier by 1. Meticulous Revision lowers Attainment, which makes later manuals cheaper. It gets no season or room-element bonus on breakthroughs, but it does get +2% under Clear Skies or Cloudy weather and up to +8% with balanced day and night light. Its manuals come second for Max Qi, Spell Power and lifespan but first for none, and five of its Golden Core realm breakthroughs each need a rare fruit or essence, so it lands in C tier.

Law of Nimbus Conquest (DLC)

Law of Nimbus Conquest (the DLC’s English law entry calls it Path of Nimbus Conquest) forms two Golden Cores, Yang and Yin, and both add to Max Qi. It is element-less for cultivation, but its Golden Core is not. The Yang core is graded like a Fire core and grows in daylight, the Yin core like a Water core at night, and Fire weather such as Noxious Air will boost the Yang core.

From Primordial Spirit on, your Yang and Yin Attainment split sets a state between Pure Yang and Pure Yin. Wood and Fire manuals add Yang, Metal and Water add Yin, and Earth or element-less manuals add to both. Pure Yang needs zero Yin, so only Wood and Fire manuals, and per the code even skill levels bought in the manual tree add Yin. Pure Yang is its artifact build, which the game says lets you destroy everything with artifacts. The exact numbers are not in the installed files, so I cannot confirm any Artifact Mastery figure, and its S rank rests on the player consensus mentioned in the tier list.

How to get more laws

Outside these routes, the miracle Soul Inquiry can also teach you a dying cultivator’s law (a 20% base roll on normal cultivators, 100% on Body cultivators), and the Heavenly Chaos card Dao Fruit at Risk will unlock every law at once, though the same card makes cultivation need five times as much.

Return to Taiyi

On day 21 from 06:00, a secret called Return to Taiyi appears at Mt. Fullmoon. It is a fixed date with no dice roll, and it will stay on the world map until you go. Send a disciple, pick Manual Pavilion, and your sect will learn all five Taiyi laws. Additionally, you will get the manual The Hermetic Tribulations, and the Ruins of Taiyi unlock.

Player reports range from day 14 to day 40. The later dates are probably when someone noticed the secret or got there.

Kunlun Qi Fair

The fair will open at Mt. Kunlun on day 112 and last 7 days. A year in this game is four 28-day seasons, or 112 days, so it really is once a year. You get one attempt per fair at one of five contests:

• Kunlun Debate: Jade Purity Immortal Law
• Crafting Contest: Myriad Artifact Law
• Alchemy Contest: Primordial Alchemy Law
• Sword Duel: Seven-Slaughtering Sword
• Magic Duel: Emotion Severing Law

The contests only show up for a disciple in the Golden Core realm or higher. Entry needs Intelligence above 6 for the Debate, or 15 or more in Artifact Crafting, Alchemy, Artifact Mastery or Spell for the others.

Your score is (stage level – 6) x 2 + stat + Luck, minus 6 for the Debate or minus 15 for the others, and the game rolls a random number from 10 to 29 against it. The stat is Intelligence for the Debate and the contest’s skill for the rest. The stage level is the game’s internal one, which runs from 7 to 9 in the Golden Core realm, so a stage 9 disciple with skill 15 and Luck 10 will score 16 and win 35% of the time, and only a score of 29 or more is a sure win. If your sect already has that law, a win gives a Eureka Pill instead (three Panacea Pills for Alchemy, a random Kunlun artifact for Crafting).

Manifesting Mandate

Manifesting Mandate is a 5-day secret that holds one of six laws: Myriad Artifact, Seven-Slaughtering Sword, Jade Purity, Heaven Stealing, Primordial Alchemy or Emotion Severing. It never offers a Taiyi law.

• Accept works if the disciple’s Law Match for that law is at least 100%, element bonuses included, and will give you the law plus a Eureka Pill. A failed check costs nothing, so simply try another disciple before the secret expires.
• Seize (Take it by force) needs Primordial Spirit and then a coin flip (1 in 2), and it ends the event either way. A failed seize destroys the law in that secret, and trying it below Primordial Spirit injures the disciple and costs sect reputation.

The secret spawns from the random secret-event roll (about a 2% share of secret events once they are unlocked), from a wish at the Mysterious Cavern and from Derivative Calculation, where each successful cast has 6 in 23 odds of being a Mandate. Each cast costs 10 years of lifespan.

He Zudao

In a normal game, only He Zudao hands out Primordial Symbols. She is the Skydome Palace elder who carries the law as an item. She has no personality trait, so the trait shortcuts that work on some NPCs will never apply to her.

1. Break her heart lock. While it is locked, her favour will not go above 60. Discuss her hobby: at 60 favour that works 20% of the time with Social 14, 50% at 15, 80% at 16 and always at 17 or more. Social 13 or lower cannot do it at 60 favour.
2. Give her a Talisman Paper. A Blood Talisman or Sacred Talisman also works. A liked gift adds about 20 to 30 favour, and the game checks for 70 after that gain.
3. At 70 or more she will hand you the Primordial Symbols Law scroll. Read it to unlock the law.

Golden Hall in Wudang

Nimbus Conquest is learned by meditating at the Golden Hall in Wudang. The disciple must be on the last Golden Core stage of their current law (stage level 9, just before Primordial Spirit), with Intelligence plus Luck at 16 or more. There is no dice roll and no rounding, so if it fails, raise the attributes and try again.

Shendao and Body laws

Shendao laws are a separate way of cultivating, and the cultivation panel shows no Law Match row for them. None of them come from contests or the Mandate. You will find them through the Lost Law secret at Mt. South, Ancient Scrolls, Ancient Caskets and the Records of Shendao, which teach all three at once.

Body laws are physical cultivation, with no manual tree and no Law Match row either. The Dragon Cliff inscriptions give the first one and reveal the Daemonia Temple, which holds the key to two more. Fallen Obliteration Body is learned from an item called Obliteration Body, but where exactly that item lies is not confirmed.

Manual Pavilion

You do not have to cultivate a law to use its manuals. Transcribing a law will copy its first-level manuals into the Manual Pavilion and give the transcriber Inspiration. Upgrade levels stay out, and so do Seven-Slaughtering Sword’s six sword-art manuals, but other one-law manuals like Heaven Stealing’s Defiled set go in.

Any disciple who reaches the right realm and meets the manual’s prerequisites can then learn those manuals there for 25% less Inspiration than on the law screen, including manuals from their own law. Stored manuals also cut every manual’s cost by 1% per 1,000 stored difficulty, up to 20%, but all twelve base-game laws together only reach about 1%.

Connective and counteractive manuals

A manual’s element changes its price. Same-element manuals cost the listed difficulty, connective ones (the two elements that feed or are fed by your law’s element) cost about 25% less (rounded to whole difficulty points, so difficulty 1 and 2 manuals get no discount), and counteractive ones cost three times as much. Element-less laws pay the base price for everything.

• Metal laws: Earth and Water are connective, Wood and Fire counteractive
• Water laws: Metal and Wood are connective, Earth and Fire counteractive
• Wood laws: Water and Fire are connective, Metal and Earth counteractive
• Fire laws: Wood and Earth are connective, Water and Metal counteractive
• Earth laws: Fire and Metal are connective, Wood and Water counteractive

The Heavenly Chaos card Five Elements Reversal swaps the two around, so trust the Connective or Counteractive label the game shows over this list.

The tripled difficulty also goes onto the disciple’s Attainment, and every later manual’s Inspiration cost grows with Attainment squared. For example, at Attainment 50 and with the Inspiration Cost setting on Ordinary (the default setting takes another 25% off), a difficulty-4 manual costs 16,200 Inspiration when connective, 21,600 when same-element and 64,800 when counteractive. One counteractive difficulty-4 manual at that point makes the next same-element difficulty-4 manual 49.8% dearer, against 15.4% after a same-element one. A counteractive Max Qi manual still gives its full Max Qi, but it will make every later manual dearer.

Can you change a disciple’s law?

Not directly. The only way is Rebirth, which turns them back into an outer disciple with no law, and you then promote them again with any law your sect knows. Rebirth will wipe the law, stage, manuals, miracles, skills, attributes, age, equipment and relationships, while the disciple keeps their name and memories. It is not confirmed whether the reborn disciple gets new starting attributes or the old ones back.

How much past Inspiration they get back depends on the item:

• Rebirth Pill: 0%
• Divine Mind: 25%, and the first one also gives +1.5 Potential
• Maligned Mind: 75%, with -1.5 Potential the first time
• Nirvana Pill: 100%, also with -1.5 Potential the first time

All four work on a dying disciple. The Taiyi laws also teach the miracle Reverie Rebirth (it needs a Soul Pearl), which works like a Rebirth Pill with no Inspiration kept. Body cultivators cannot be reborn with these pills, since the game ignores the pill’s effect for them.

Other questions

Are unorthodox laws any good?

Random or unorthodox laws pay the same breakthrough rewards as the named laws, but only up to their tier’s cap. A Worldly Law stops at Core Shaping and never forms a Golden Core, a Golden Core Law stops in the Golden Core, and a Primordial Spirit Law stops there and cannot ascend. Only an Ascension Law gets the full set. Breakthroughs never raise attributes on any law. They raise Max Qi, lifespan and artifact or spell power instead.

Can you raise Luck?

Yes. Permanent Luck is granted by law manuals (Sunflower’s Void Worship +20%, Jade Purity’s Heavenly Harmony and Terraforce, True Sun’s Heavenly Radiance, Grand Chariot’s Fatebreak Incantation), by the Eternity Pill, Bane Pill and Fortune Dew (+10%, +10% and +20% to all five attributes) and by the manual Way of Heavenly Fortune (+20%). For a temporary boost, the Blessed Pill gives +30% Luck for 48 hours.

Conclusion

If you just want a strong sect without the DLC, then Sunflower Refining for your first disciples, Seven-Slaughtering Sword for your fighters and Primordial Symbols once He Zudao hands it over is probably the way to go. Law Match is worth caring about, but it is only a multiplier, and in most cases Max Qi is what will hold your Golden Core back.